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Berkeley's Ontology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

David R. Raynor
David R. Raynor
Affiliation:
University of Ottawa
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Extract

Berkeley's Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge was published in 1710, when he was only twenty-five. The public silence that greeted it stunned him. Even the ridicule that he had anticipated was initially confined to private circles. No doubt this mortifying experience reinforced his belief “that whatever doctrine contradicts vulgar and settled opinion” must “be introduced with great caution into the world”. It had, indeed, been for this reason that he had “omitted all mention of the non-existence of matter in the title-page, dedication, preface, and introduction to” his performance. In this way he hoped that “the notion of [immaterialism] might steal unawares on the reader, who possibly would never have meddled with a book that he had known contained such paradoxes”.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , Winter 1987 , pp. 611 - 620
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1987

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References

1 Berkeley to SirPercival, John, 6 Sept. 1710: The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, ed. Luce, A. A. and Jessop, T. E. (London: T. Nelson, 1948–1957), VIII, 36Google Scholar (hereafter Works).

2 Reprinted as Appendix C in Bracken, H. M., The Early Reception of Berkeley's Immaterialism, 1710–1733 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Berkeley to Samuel Johnson, 4 April 1734: Works, VIII, 236.Google Scholar

4 Luce, A. A., The Dialectic of Immaterialism: An Account of the Making of Berkeley's “Principles” (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1963), 166.Google Scholar

5 A Treatise of Human Nature (London, 1739)Google Scholar, Bk. I, Pt. IV, Sec. II.

6 The first quotation is from The Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained (1733)Google Scholar, §1; the second is from entry 838 of the notebooks: Works, I, 100Google Scholar. References to the Principles (hereafter Pr.) will be by section; references to the Dialogues (hereafter DHP) will be to the appropriate page in Works.

7 An essay on the existence of matter, wherein the extraordinary philosophy of the celebrated Dr. Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, is impartially considered, and fully confuted, and the manner of the existence of external bodies clearly explained (London, 1751), 16f.Google Scholar

8 Mabbott, J. D., “The Place of God in Berkeley's Philosophy”, The Journal of Philosophical Studies (1931)Google Scholar; reprinted in Armstrong, D. M. and Martin, C. B., eds., Locke and Berkeley (London: Anchor Books, 1968).Google Scholar

9 Cf. R. I. Aaron's unjustly neglected “Locke and Berkeley's Commonplace Book”, Mind (1930)Google Scholar. For helpful discussions of Locke's examination of Malebranche see Duchesneau, F., L'Empirisme de Locke (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973)Google Scholar and Yolton, J. W., Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).Google Scholar

10 Examination of Malebranche, §30: The Works of John Locke (London, 1828), IX, 229.Google Scholar

11 “Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas”, Acta eruditorum, 1684 (Loemker's translation). Cf. Discourse on Metaphysics, §§28f.

12 Ramsay, Andrew Michael, The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (Glasgow, 1749), II, 248Google Scholar; italics added.

13 Quoted from Adams, R. M., “Phenomenalism and Corporeal Substance in Leibniz”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy (1983)Google Scholar. See also Robinet, A., “Leibniz: Lecture du Treatise de Berkeley”, Études philosophiques (1983)Google Scholar; and McIntosh, J. J., “Leibniz and Berkeley”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1970–1971).Google Scholar

14 The Nation (1 August 1901), 96.Google Scholar

15 Fraser, A. C., Berkeley (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1909), 87Google Scholar; Johnstone, G., The Development of Berkeley's Philosophy (London: Russell & Russell, 1923), 154ffGoogle Scholar.; Hicks, G. Dawes, Berkeley (London: Benn, 1932), 137ffGoogle Scholar; Bracken, , Early Reception, 87.Google Scholar

16 Treatise, Bk. I, Pt. IV, Sec. VI. Cf. my “Hume and Berkeley's Three Dialogues”, forthcoming in Oxford Studies in the History of Philosophy.

17 de Maupertuis, P.-L. M., Réflexions philosophiques sur l'origine des langues (Dresden, 1752)Google Scholar, esp. sec. XXIV. Cf. Strawson, P. F., Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959), 202–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dummett, M., The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 216–219.Google Scholar

18 Recherche de la vérité, Eclaircissement X; Reply to the Third Objection.

19 See entry 836 of the notebooks: “Treating of Matter I had better say the proportion & Beauty of Things than their species (which Locke hath proved already) are the Workmanship of the Mind”.

20 Dutens, Louis, Recherches sur l'origine des découvertes attribuées aux modernes (Paris, 1766), 1, 56ffGoogle Scholar. M. F. Burnyeat discusses Berkeley's debt to the Theaetetus in “Idealism and Greek Philosophy: What Descartes Saw and Berkeley Missed”, The Philosophical Review (1982)Google Scholar; reprinted in Vesey, G., ed., Idealism: Past and Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).Google Scholar